Farewell to New Matilda
The internet was once hailed as the place where independent media could flourish. But after six years, New Matilda has run out of money and been forced to close its doors. Catherine Zengerer reports.
New Matilda announced its closure due to lack of funds. Image: Reportage
Much to the disappointment of purveyors of quality, independent online media everywhere, newmatilda.com has announced that it is shutting down as of Friday 25 June.
“It probably won’t surprise you to learn that newmatilda.com has never operated on a profit. However, we had projected that the site would break even by 2010,” wrote editor Marni Cordell in her editorial on Thursday 27 May.
“We’ve now come to realise we were being too optimistic and that we’re unable to continue publishing into the next financial year. This is in large part due to the sheer difficulty of selling online advertising in the current media environment.”
In an interview with The Wire, Cordell elaborated:
“I’m really disappointed. It was coming for a little while but I was hoping it wouldn’t end with us folding completely. I think we’re quite unique in the online media sector in that we have very high standards for our articles! And I think we’ll be missed for that reason. We put a lot of effort into fact-checking and making sure that writing is of a high standard, and sadly, I think that a lot of outlets, you know, there’s been a proliferation of online outlets, but that’s certainly not one of the overarching qualities of online media these days.”
But how did this happen? Wasn’t the internet meant to be the new frontier of independent media?
“I think it is,” Cordell said, “but a lot of the comment sites that are launching recently are attached to the large media organizations, so I think online’s quite a way off making money in its own right, but I do think online is the way it’s going.”
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Each year over the past three years, New Matilda’s hits have doubled, but the site’s increasing popularity in turn increased overhead costs that advertising dollars were not following.
In her editorial, Cordell points out that at six years old the site is almost a veteran of Australian online news, and has never been affiliated with a political party or lobby group; rather, it has tried to embrace a range of opinions.
In reference to larger media outlets likewise trying to find their feet in the online world, Cordell said:
“If all of our readers did pay to read newmatilda we would actually have enough to survive, but unfortunately we made a decision to drop subscriptions at a time when the online advertising market looked quite healthy.
“Since then we’ve had the global financial crisis and also a lot of new players coming on the scene, and the situation’s changed quite dramatically since then. Perhaps that decision was made too quickly, to drop subscriptions, and I do think that those other sites, if they have a big machine behind them, they’re more likely to survive.”
New Matilda’s readership has rallied since the announcement, offering to help where they can.
“A lot of them have offered to step in with small amounts of money, which is hugely appreciated, we’ve had a lot of calls and emails and comments on the website to that effect,” Cordell said.
“Look, it would need to be thousands of them to commit to subscribing for us to be able to stay afloat, which I’m not saying is impossible, but I guess what we really need is someone to step in and buy us some time … It would take a few months to turn that around and change our business model and at the moment we don’t have the money to make that happen.”
Catherine Zengerer is a producer for The Wire.
